Well, we said our goodbyes to our Youth at Dale City Baptist Church on Wednesday after 10 years of service. It was a sad night for us. The Lord had been working on our hearts about making this move two years ago and we just felt that it was our time. Sunday, we went forward with a letter of transfer to Emmanuel Baptist Church. We were so impressed with the worship, the preaching, the youth group, outreach, evangelism, and the whole organization of the church, and most of all the church family. We will be attending a New Member’s Class and then we will be presented in front of the church at a Business Meeting for voting. This is an exciting time in our lives and we just can’t wait to see where the Lord will have us serve at Emmanuel. Emmanuel is a wonderful place to worship. For information on Emmanuel you can visit www.ebcnva.org.
Well we talked to our pastor last night, and we told him that we were leaving, he was not surprised.
We were very active in Dale City Baptist Church’s youth and children ministry. That is the part of the church we are going to miss. There are some great youth in that church, youth that love the Lord and are willing to serve Him. We are going to miss them, my only regret is that I wished the rest of the church could see what we see in them.
But we also look forward to our new ministry opportunities. Erika and Amanda went to the youth group at the church we will join Sunday. They really enjoyed the atmosphere there. They are excited about the possibilities of this new ministry.
I got up early this morning to do a carrier deployment. Setup my machine… logged into the admin machines… made the edits… read the deploy notes… called into the bridge number…. no answer….
reread the deploy notes… the install is for tomorrow morning…. uugh…
We have been struggling to make a decision regarding whether to leave Dale City Baptist Church or not. Well, what happened this past Sunday helped make up our mind.
We have been without a youth pastor since he left last December. At that time, we were assured that the church was behind the youth of the church and the ministry. Since my wife and I are heading up the youth ministry, this was reassuring. Our youth group has been in decline since the youth pastor left, but we have worked hard at keeping the youth groups on Sunday and Wednesday relevent to the youth of the church.
Sunday, one of the elders told us that they felt the youth should be in the main service rather than have a service that is geared toward them. We have also talked to some in the church that felt that these youth need to “learn to listen”. I am unsure what that means, other than some in the church think they are dealing with 10 year old children rather than young adults that are making decisions that will effect their lives for decades to come.
Unfortunatly this has already had a impact on our daughter. She has told us that she does not want to go to church. We know that this has had a similar impact on other youth in the church, they probably will not come back. It concerns my wife and me that the “Year of Change” that the church is trying to begin, starts with the elimination of ministries. The alienation of those people that are at most risk to leaving the church.
We have an appointment with the pastor of another church in our area to talk to him about joining thier ministry. I think at this point, we know that we are leaving our current church… it is time.
It is time we find a church that has a ministry focus, time we find a church that wants to outreach, time we find a church that is more concerned about reaching people for Christ rather than whether people are in bible study or not.